Social Revolution of the 1960's
...o the security of the United States for a long time. The administrations in Washington could also see the “threat” that Communism posed, and in turn established a policy of strict containment. This meant that wherever Communism spread, the United States would be there to beat it back. This rang especially true with those veterans that had fought in the war, “they were never able to disengage from what they felt were the lessons of World War II…We had to stand up to all forms of aggression –Nazis or Commies-for if we did not, then one nation after another would “fall like dominoes.”” A lot of this concern with security came from the parents of what would become the “Baby Boom” growing up in the great Depression. This caused a great many to be frugal, or “pinch pennies”, and the economic prosperity that followed the war was something that changed life for most Americans. It brought the explosion of suburbia, and with it came the life of conformity that would eventually wear on society so much that people chose to rise up against it. The idea that there was a perfect family structure fed into society, the father is the breadwinner, the wife is the happy homemaker, and the kids were well mannered and grew to be exemplary members of society was something that, once those kids began to think for themselves, they realized that it was not realistic in the slightest. They realized that there were injustices happening everywhere, and they just might be worth fighting for. The issue of civil rights became a central theme in society around the end of the 1950’s. At the time, women were strapped into this stereotype that they were to be the mother and the housewife and her job was to maintain the home and the children. “As Life declared in the special Christmas issue of 1956, “of all the accomplishments of the American woman, the one she brings off with the most spectacular success is having babies.”” Women faced a great adversary that was American society. Very few women held jobs, and those that did had salaries or wages that were in no way comparable to their male counterparts. If the thought of going to college to gain a higher education in order to obtain a higher position in the workforce, they were met with the same roadblocks. They were not necessarily forced into, but were greatly encouraged to take certain courses of study such as teaching, or nursing. Some “college administrators also decided that coeds needed a curriculum that would serve society’s demands that girls grow up to become happy homemakers: home economics.” These themes, along with the sexual double standard that said that women were to be “pure and virtuous” and men could run wild and it was ok were issues that would lead to the rebellion by women to break these stereotypes and gain an equal footing with their opposite sex. Even through all this though, blacks in America had it far worse than any other demographic. African Americans in the South in the 1950’s were heavily discriminated against. There were Jim Crow laws throughout the South and the doctrine of “separate but equal”, which was established by the Supreme Court in 1896 in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson was so common that no one thought twice about it, that is unless you were black. “Separate but equal” basically meant that there were separate facilities for blacks and whites, for example, separate water fountains, separate washrooms, separate eating establishments, etc. The discrimination did not stop there however. Whites in the South looked to suppress African Americans in any way they could. This meant that they were “not allowed” to vote. Measures were put into place that prevented blacks from fully utilizing their right to vote. “Black voting rights were restricted throughout the South by legal gimmicks such as white primaries, literacy tests, poll taxes, and even good character tests…In 1958 the Civil Rights Commission found that in Alabama only 9 percent of blacks in the state were registered to vote, and that figure was only 4 percent in Mississippi. The commission also found 16 counties in the South which had a majority of black residents but not one black voter.” It was not much better for blacks in the North either. While they did have the right to vote, there was always a very low turnout on election day. ...